| Trends
by
Rob Walker
Virginia
Business
June 2004
Donation
funds Virginia’s second real estate chair
Virginia’s profile as a good place for college
students to study real estate is rising with the funding
of a second chair of real estate at a major university.
Prominent Hampton Roads developer Robert M. Stanton
donated $1.5 million to Old Dominion University to help
establish a chair in his name that will be a centerpiece
of the school’s Center for Real Estate and Economic
Development.
Stanton’s gift will be part of a $4.5 million
endowment, which paves the way for scholarships, internships
and curricular changes intended to boost enrollment
in ODU’s real estate major. The donation was inspired
and matched by Frank Batten Sr., retired CEO of Landmark
Communications. The balance of the money for the Robert
M. Stanton Chair will be raised from alumni and the
area’s real estate community.
“This is an expression of gratitude for what the
university has meant to me,” and it represents
the kind of private support higher education needs during
this period of limited public resources, says Stanton.
He graduated from ODU in 1961, served as its rector
for four years and was a founding member of ODU’s
Real Estate Foundation Board in 1994.
Nancy Bagranoff, dean of ODU’s College of Business
and Public Administration — which includes the
real estate center — says the endowment will enable
the university to reposition its real estate curriculum
with more attention to economic development. The new
chair also will enhance the program’s marketability
to top students and faculty.
The Stanton chair is the second in Virginia dedicated
to real estate study. Virginia Commonwealth University
has been home for about 30 years to the Alfred L. Blake
Chair of Real Estate. David H. Downs, the Blake professor,
says the VCU program is reaching for a more national
profile. “We want to be well informed on what
goes on among practitioners,” Down says, “but
we also are capable of doing serious research and writing
on bigger issues” related to development.
VCU’s program is available to undergraduate and
graduate students and attracts lawyers, portfolio managers
and research directors for businesses involved in development.
ODU’s program expects to function in a similar
way. Bagranoff says the chair will be filled by “an
academic with primary responsibilities of teaching and
research.” She isn’t sure when the chair
would be filled. Meanwhile, some of the endowment will
be used to support and expand the work of the real estate
and economic development center.
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